The Value of Female Friendship in Seventeenth

The Value of Female Friendship in
Seventeenth-Century Spain
Lisa Vollendorf
The topic of women's friendship in the early modern period has proved
elusive for literary critics. Male-authored literature abounds with examples of female characters who ally themselves with sisters, maids, and
friends; yet female friendship tends to be subsumed by the marriage plots
that structure much of the theater and prose fiction. In the Spanish
context, this problem is compounded by the image of a masculinist,
honor-crazed society projected by travel literature, theater, and historiography. Many canonical works portray women as victims of the honor
code, but relatively few female characters stand out for their remarkable
strength and characterization.'
Dozens of early modern Spanish women writers are known to us today, and scholarship on their texts and lives should help enrich our
understanding of European literature and women's history. In addition to
writing convent and closet drama, for example, women in Spain wrote
plays that probably were destined for the public stage. Moreover, feminist
history has much to leam from the Spanish example. Although critics often look to late seventeenth-century English writers for the roots of
modem feminist thinking, in 1637 Maria de Zayas published bestselling
texts that denounced "the vain legislators of the world" for rendering
women "powerless and deny(ing) us access to pen and sword."^ Female
dramatists' texts and the proto-feminism of Zayas's prose are representative of the fascinating writings and life stories that have been scrutinized
in recent decades. As a result of such research, figures as diverse as the
crossdressed adventurer Catalina de Erauso, the missionary Luisa de
Carvajal, the professional writer Ana Caro, and the nun/pla}rwright Sor
Marcela de San Felix have been added to a list that used to include only
Saint Teresa as a major female figure.^
Writing for public consumption and/or from within convent walls,
these and other women brought different perspectives to bear on the
dominant literary genres of the period. One of the principal themes
shared by their writing is that of female homosociality. Regardless of
Texas Studies in Literature and Language, Vol. 47, No. 4, Winter 2005
© 2005 by the University of Texas Press, P.O. Box 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819
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genre or intended audience, the texts explore a wide spectrum of possible relationships that women might have with each other. Ranging from
competition and betrayal to intimacy and homoeroticism, homosociality
occupies a central place in most of the female-authored texts of the period. The following overview of women's self-representation in writing
produced for popular consumption and that produced by religious
women intramuros presents a sampling of seemingly disparate writers
who nonetheless valorize the time women spend with each other,
refuse to capitulate to a strictly heteroerotic focus, and depict female
homosociality as a legitimate—and sometimes lasting—option for
women. The choice of writers here is purposefully eclectic, as it is meant
to provide insight into a pattern that emerges when we take a thematic
approach to women's texts of the period: in the hands of many early
modern women from the Iberian Peninsula, the heterocentricism of canonical literature acquires nuance and complexity, as men are pushed
to the margins and concems about female sexuality, friendship, and wellbeing take center stage."*
I. Women and the Book Market
In spite of stylistic and ideological differences, many connections can be
made among the seventeenth-century authors Maria de Zayas (1590-?),
Ana Caro (c.l600-?), and Mariana de Carvajal (1610-?). All three published during a time when few women are known to have enjoyed
success in such a venture. By 1637, with the publication of Zayas's Novelas
amorosas y ejemplares (The Enchantments of Love) and the previous commis-
sion of Caro's poems for royal festivities, both Zayas and Caro had begun
to pave the way for other women's entry into the publishing world.
Widely recognized by their contemporaries as talented authors in their
own right, Zayas and Caro apparently sought each other out, as they were
reported to be seen together in Madrid.^ Mariana de Carvajal wrote under
trying circumstances. When her husband died in 1656, Carvajal was left
with little money to support her and her nine children. While it is unclear
whether she tumed to writing to supplement her income, Carvajal did
choose to cultivate one of the most popular genres of the period; her
framed novella collection, Navidades de Madrid (Ghristmas in Madrid), re-
ceived approval for publication in 1663. Written in the tradition of major
writers such as Miguel de Cervantes and Alonso de Castillo Solorzano,
Christmas in Madrid also identifies Carvajal as a direct successor to Zayas,
who is widely recognized as the great female novelista and as one of the
feminist foremothers of Spain.*"
Women's relationships dominate the plots and thematics of much of
these authors' literary production.'' Working within the conventions of
Friendship in Seventeenth-Century Spain
427
prose and drama, Carvajal, Zayas, and Caro bring a decidedly distinct
perspective to bear on discourse otherwise controlled by men. As the beneficiary of her predecessors' successful intervention in the male-dominated
book market, for example, Carvajal produced a volume that strikes a balance between convention and innovation. Christmas in Madrid appears to
deviate very little from the conventions of the genre; critics tend to see it
as conservative in both ideology and style. The frame tale revolves around
the affairs of an aristocratic household, for example, and the stories themselves explore the standard themes of marital and familial politics.
However, the detailed descriptions of clothing and interiors constitute
a unique domestic aesthetic for which Carvajal has been praised and
condemned.*
Although Carvajal's writing has been viewed as politically disengaged and tediously detailed, the combination of her aesthetic with the
focus on female friendship and desire gives her texts an undeniably different flair that distinguishes them from any other novella collection of
the century. For example, the extensive descriptions of domestic space
highlight the female-focus of the frame tale, in which a widow, Lucrecia,
gathers with her closest circle of friends to tell tales during the Christmas
season. Aimed at lifting Lucrecia's spirits, the festivities center on the
friendship between the protagonist and another widow Juana, and on the
courtship rituals of the younger generation.
The emphasis on women's community frames our reading of these
tales, as it turns the reader's attention to the female characters' experiences. While Lucrecia and Juana support each other as they make
decisions on behalf of their unmarried children in the frame tale, for example, the women in the novellas have varying levels of support for (and
control over) their decision-making. The stories that have been translated
into English exemplify two common depictions of the female experience
in Carvajal.' In the fifth tale, "Quien bien obra, siempre acierta" ("Virtue
Is Its Own Reward"), women have little power over their circumstances.
Esperanza's half-brother beats her when he discovers love letters a man
named Luis has written her. Because of enmity between the father and
Luis, the male family members prohibit the alliance and arrange for
Esperanza to be killed. Luis's brother Alonso rescues her from a certain
death, the would-be murderers (her half-brother and a male slave) are
punished for their intended crime, and the authorities force the father to
allow the original marriage to proceed. Throughout these events,
Esperanza is portrayed as the victim of a dishonorable father, who has
taken a slave for his lover, and an immoral half-brother, who is the mulatto progeny of the father's aUiance. In a transparent act of exchange,
male authorities authorize Esperanza's marriage and force the father
to sell his lover/slave outside of the city limits. The absence of the
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Lisa Vollendorf
protagonist's mother creates a void in which the daughter falls victim to
domestic violence and a nearly successful murder plot.
In contrast to the isolation of Esperanza in "Virtue Is Its Own Reward," women's friendships form the backbone of the juxtaposed sixth
tale in the collection. In "Celos vengan desprecios" ("Love Conquers
AU"), the strong-willed protagonist Narcisa surrounds herself with female friends and rejects the advances of all men but one. Disgusted with
arrogant suitors and a justice system that fails to protect her from men's
aggressive advances, Narcisa relies on a circle of women for friendship
and support. Narcisa's suitors are disrespectful and inadequate, but she
leads a fulfilled life surrounded by women whose friendships sustain her.
Even when the inevitable knight in shiriing armor appears and Narcisa
decides to marry, the tale emphasizes the important role of female friends.
From making decisions based on her friends' wishes to responding to
their desire to see her, Narcisa operates within a female-centered community of her own creation.
Christmas in Madrid emphasizes women's spaces and relationships,
but the text lacks the political punch of Zayas's earlier Enchantments of
Love and Disenchantments of Love. Homoeroticism and female friendship
provide an apt point of comparison to demonstrate the differences between the authors' politics. While Carvajal's frame tale culminates with
three wedding engagements and her character Narcisa lives in a
homosocial world and only shows interest in a heteroerotic alliance when
it suits her, Zayas's frame tale protagonist Lisis retreats to the all-female
world of the convent in an explicit protest of the treatment of women in
society. Accompanied by two friends and eventually joined by her
mother, Lisis chooses the convent over marriage. The narrator informs us,
"This end is not tragic but rather the happiest one you can imagine for,
although courted and desired by many, she did not subject herself to anyone."'" Lisis's decision is cast as a response to the stories of victimization,
in which more than thirty female characters are raped, strangled, poisoned, beheaded, and otherwise abused.
Zayas's emphasis on violence against women finds its complement
in a strong endorsement of female solidarity. The female narrators often
condemn those women who betray others, for example, and friendships
cross class and ethnic lines in some of the tales. The focus on women's
alliances and spaces is most apparent in the frame tale, but in the sixth
story of The Disenchantments it metamorphoses to incorporate female homoeroticism as another facet of women's affective lives. In "Amar solo
por veneer" ("Love for the Sake of Conquest"), a young girl is wooed by a
crossdressed suitor who penetrates the protective home environment
by posing as a handmaid. Like many literary examples of crossdressing, Esteban/Estefanfa's relationship with the prepubescent Laurela
Friendship in Seventeenth-Century Spain
429
provides a front for homoerotic exchange. This exchange culminates in an
overt defense of same-sex erotic alliances, as Esteban/Estefania explains
that his/her sex bears no relevance on his/her desire for Laurela:
(S)ince the soul is the same in male and female, it matters not
whether I'm a man or a woman. Souls aren't male or female and true
love dwells in the soul, not in the body. One who loves the body with
only the body carmot say that is love; it's lust [...]."
In the end, Laurela discovers Esteban/Estefanfa's true male identity and
has sex with him. Then, in punishment for her "corrupt" ways, her family
members kill her. While the gruesome outcome of the tale quashes any
sense of idealism we might glean from the endorsement of homoeroticism, the first part of the tale engages the topic of female same-sex desire.
Many of the erotically charged interactions between the young mistress and her handmaid take place in front of the servants and family
members. The reactions of the others to these expressions of same-sex
love offer us, as modem readers, a rare chance to gauge the interpretation
of female homoeroticism in the period.'^ The responses to Esteban/
Estefania's expressions of same-sex love appear in the following passage:
[Laurela] and the other women thought it was simply folly, but it
amused them and made them laugh whenever they saw her play the
exaggerated and courtly role of lover, lamenting Laurela's disdain
and weeping from jealousy. They were surprised that a woman could
be so much in love with another woman, but it never crossed their
minds that things might be other than they seemed."
The women mock their companion's pangs of love, and they also respond
with mild surprise. Yet the tone here is one of ambivalence: Laurela, her
father, and the household servants seem to take the wooing of one woman
by another in stride. The only character mildly bothered by the courtship
is Laurela's father, because he wants to have sex with Esteban/Estefania.
The general ambivalence is revealing, for it reinforces the absence of references to female homoeroticism in the legal codes—which only legislated
against sodomy—and the written record—which generally lacks reference to female same-sex relations. The ambivalence also provides a rare
confirmation of a phenomenon that scholars historically have believed to
be true: female same-sex desire did not provoke the same vehement response as male homoeroticism.'* More revealing, however, is the
representation of the community's response to female same-sex desire:
viewed as a legitimate, non-threater\ing, and only slightly surprising possibility, women's desire for each other is portrayed in a positive light.
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Lisa Vollendorf
Although the characters' reactions place this homoerotic tale in a
wholly different category from similar literary examples, the crossdressing
in "Love for the Sake of Conquest" tempers the glimpse into female samesex relations. Depictions of same-sex desire involving one crossdressed
character are most common in drama, a genre that tends to leave us guessing at contemporary reactions. Ana Caro's Valor, agravio y mujer {Valor,
Outrage, Woman, c. 1630^0) provides an excellent example of a text that
follows the standard plotline toward heteroerotic resolution in marriage
and, along the way toward this resolution, also finds room for exploration
of homoeroticism and female friendship.'^ Like Shakespeare's Twelfth Night
(c.l600), Caro's Valor hinges on a crossdressed female character who tries
to recapture the man of her choice by wooing another' woman. The final
scenes in the plays share the same denouement and similar rhetoric, with
the important distinction that Caro highlights the consequences of women
using each other in the service of heteroerotic alliances.
In Valor Ana Caro portrays a world in which women must fend for
themselves. Seeking to make her ex-lover Don Juan comply with his obligations to marry her, the protagonist Leonor takes the desperate measure
of crossdressing in order to woo Juan's latest love interest. As Leonardo,
Leonor is so successful in her courtship that the usually disdainful Estela
falls for him/her immediately. The message seems clear enough: while
Estela struck male suitors as demanding, Leonor/Leonardo easily wins
her love because women know what women want.'* While Valor ends
with the necessary male-female pairings, the differences between this restoration of heteroeroticism and the resolution of Twelfth Night suggest
that Caro manages to maintain a sharp focus on women's alliances, even
in the final moments of the play.
In Twelfth Night Olivia discovers that her love interest, Cesario, is really Viola. In response, Olivia seems to welcome the shift in definition of
their relationship, as she cries, "A sister! You are she!" (V.i.325). In Valor
when Leonor/Leonardo exits as a man and then returns to the stage as a
woman, Estela utters almost the exact words as Olivia. Yet Estela first expresses her disenchantment and disbelief when, vmlike the other characters
on stage at the time, she refuses to accept the female identity of her lover
and uses the masculine name to ask, "Leonardo, you were deceiving me?"
Leonor responds, "It was necessary, Estela."''' This is the only momerit in
the play in which both women know the sex of the other, and, like many
other examples of homoerotic interaction, it is a fleeting moment. But the
articulation that the heteroerotic imperative necessitates such betrayal
between women gives an edge to an otherwise commonplace ending. Only
after the expression of dismay do we arrive at the sisterly alliance similar
to that of Twelfth Night. Estela speaks first to Leonor (and not to the man
she will marry) when announcing her intentions, "Let us remain sisters.
Friendship in Seventeenth-Century Spain
431
fair Leonor."'* Solidifying a permanent, sororal bond, Estela then takes
the initiative in asking Leonor's brother for his hand.
As these examples suggest, Carvajal, Zayas, and Caro portray some
headstrong female characters yet often remain within the conventions of
their chosen genres in terms of plot resolution. However, their representations of female friendship and eroticism explore territory not charted out
by male authors of the period. All three authors focus more on female
than male characters and on a variety of relationships between women.
Carvajal's emphasis on female characters and domestic detail is complemented, for example, by Zayas's depiction of the convent as a safe space
for women. Moreover, all three authors depict homosocial worlds that
include, in Zayas and Caro, homoeroticism. While homosocial networks
support inany of the female characters, when it comes to eroticism all
three authors rely on male-female alliances for closure in much of their
work. Only Zayas, whose novellas are populated with married women,
imagines a resolution outside of the heteroerotic economy: in Lisis she
creates a character who rejects marriage in favor of the convent. This
overview suggests that women authors probed female alliances with a
greater intensity than their male counterparts, exploring the importance
of female friendship, highlighting the sacrifices women make to the
heterosexual economy, and, in the rare example of Zayas, explicitly endorsing homoeroticism as a legitimate manifestation of female desire.
IL Intramuros: Convent Literature
In spite of the fluid configurations of female same-sex desire in many
texts written for the public eye, literary convention dictated that friendship be sacrificed to heteroerotic alliances and that women's concerns
be given over to men's. Convent writing responded to a different readership and different rules. Women religious wrote in response to their
confessors' requests, as a means to instruct other nuns, for purposes of
correspondence, and for convent festivities. Guided by the formulas of
hagiography, nuns cultivated a wide variety of genres that included vitae (biography and autobiography), letters, poetry, instruction and prayer
manuals, and even drama. As Caroline Walker Bynum and others have
shown, eroticism occupied a central place in such texts; metaphors of
marriage, sexuality, and sensuality often refer to human relationships
with God." While the patriarchal structure of the church and of Christianity influence the rhetoric and thematics of religious writing, convent
literature contains a multifaceted treatment of women's relationships
with each other.
A sonnet by Sor Violante do Ceo (1601-93) captures the intensity of
such relationships and provides a framework for thinking about female
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Lisa Vollendorf
friendship.^" Most likely written for the writer Dona Bemarda Ferreira,
the sormet speaks in terms of commodities and value:
Belisa, friendship is a treasure
so deserving of eternal estimation
that it is insufficient to measure its worth
against the silver and gold of Arabia and Potosi.
Friendship is a precious honor
that one treasures in presence and in absence;
and through which one shares the sadness, sorrow,
smiles, and tears of another.
A bond of violence is not a friendship,
for friendship is based on sympathy,
from which loyalty reigns until death:
This is the friendship that I would like to find,
this is what lives on between friends,
and this, Belisa, in the end, is my friendship.^'
While the sonnet emphasizes loyalty and interdependence, its most compelling lines refer to questions of value and exchange. Sor Violante's
reference to the spoils of overseas exploration contrasts hard currency
with the immeasurable worth of an emotional bond: friendship is a treasure more valuable than the most exotic riches of the world. The sonnet
thus localizes and interiorizes the question of worth, rejecting the market
economy for an emotional economy.
As suggested by Sor Violante's poetry, the value of female friendship
for cloistered nuns carmot be underestimated. Convent literature refers to
many configurations of female relationships. Logically enough, writers often invoke the language of sororal and maternal bonds. One of the best
examples of such language appears in Sor Angela Maria de la Concepcion's
Riego espiritual para las nuevas plantas (Watering the Spirit of New Plants, 1691).
Founder and prioress of the Trinitarian Convent of the Recoletos in Toboso,
Sor Angela wrote this spiritual instruction manual for the nims of her order.
Like similar texts, most famously those of Saint Teresa, Watering the Spirit
guides women in their quest for exemplary spirituality. Using the Teresian
metaphor of plants that constantly need water in order to grow, Sor Angela
emphasizes tiiat "all of our life on earth is a continuous battle, which is experienced not only in temporal life, but also, and with even more liveliness,
in the life of [spiritual] perfection."^ She goes on to call her religious sisters
warriors "who, with a manly spirit, have signed up under the banner of
their husband."" With its commonplace references to God as husband and
to spirituality as a military endeavor, the spiritual tract aims to prepare
women for the battle against earthly temptations.
Friendship in Seventeenth-Century Spain
433
Most striking in Sor Angela's text is the intimacy with which she addresses her sisters. In one of the opening sentences, for example, she
refers to the nuns as "my dear loved ones, servants of God, humble little
flock of the Church, new plants of Religion. "^^ Over and over, she caUs the
nuns carisimas hermanas and hijas—dear sisters and daughters. The use of
the plural first person pronoun nosotras also adds intimacy to the text, as
Sor Angela includes herself as someone fighting for spiritual perfection
on earth: "But let us not lose faith or hope; let our faith, hope, and
love in God be revived. "^^ The occasional use of the first person in
the advice manual creates a sense of equality; it emphasizes that all of
the women, regardless of rank in the convent, must work to perfect themselves spiritually.
As Watering the Spirit demor\strates, convent writing often highlights
the emotional intensity of an almost entirely homosocial community. Convent texts also provide an excellent reality check for those of us interested in
reconstructing the contours of women's relationships. While the focus on
female characters in other literature hiight tempt us to idealize women's
representations of friendship and to gloss over dissension between women,
convent writing is groimded in day-to-day details that capture the difficulty
of cloistered life and the tensions ihat arise among members of the community. ^'' Discussions of daily discord are common. Sor Angela warns, for
example, "All creatures, my sisters, are obligated to serve God, and for this
they won't be lacking in fights and difficulties to overcome."^'' Read in the
context of religious women's writing, this cautionary statement should be
taken as a reference to both spiritual and domestic challenges.
Sor Catalina de Jesus's spiritual biography details the social and domestic pressures of the convent while also providing a fairly complete
sketch of the network of relationships in one woman's life. While this vita
was written by Sor Catalina's son, Juan de Bernique, it purportedly cites
verbatim from her letters and previous autobiographies. Bernique, himself a priest, builds a standard hagiographic narrative aroimd his mother's
words.^* The story of Sor Catalina's joumey from reluctant wife and mother
to contented bride of Christ justifies the nun's rejection of motherhood as
a pre-destined result of her spirituality. While the text has the clear intention of glorifying the nun's spiritual exemplarity, it also commimicates
the pressures facing women as wives, mothers, and nuns.
Like other vitae, Sor Catalina's text discusses the young woman's reluctance to marry and her distaste for sex. In so doing, it delineates one of
the major social pressures on young women in Spanish society:
All of the creatures plotted against me with every means that one can
imagine so that I would marry. I entered into marriage with such disgust and so much hatred; I can't really say where this came
^'
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Lisa Vollendorf
The primary source of this "plotting" against the young orphan was her
aunt, who plays a pivotal role in the auto/biography. Catalina finally capitulated and married a man much older than she, had several children
by him, and then was widowed at a relatively young age. Rather than
remarry, Catalina de Bernique left the children in her aunt's care and took
religious vows.
Sor Catalina's relationships with other women add a dimension of
complexity to the auto/biography. On the one hand, she relies on her
aunt as a caregiver to herself (as a child) and to her children. The aunt
opposes her becoming a nun, complains about Catalina's dangerous practice of dragging her children along to attend to the sick and the poor, and
intervenes when Catalina's bodily mortification becomes too excessive.
Yet the auto/biography portrays Catalina as the dutiful daughter who
vows "to kiss the hand of her aunt every night in gratitude."^" The familial tensions continued well into Catalina's life as a nun. The picture that
emerges gives us insight into the entrepreneurial endeavors of two spirited women. According to her son, Sor Catalina came to believe that she
was destined to found a school for young girls in her home, but she faced
certain difficulties because her aunt's house:
was often frequented by people from the university because the art of
printing was taught there; and so the first task that she took on was to
rid the house of this exercise because a place that had a stream of
people coming through daily could not be a good place to have a
school for young girls.^'
The aunt purportedly resisted, saying she did not want her home filled
with "other women's daughters," nor did she want to be "thrown out or
have her livelihood taken away."^^ In spite of this tension, the women
worked together to found the school. Catalina's attention to her ailing
aunt perhaps offered certain compensations for the many impositions she
placed on her older relative, who had an eye problem that, in Bernique's
estimation, "could have disgusted anyone with even the strongest stomach." Yet Catalina "went every morning to her aunt's bed and licked and
cleaned all of the excretions" until the infection subsided.^^
The text also emphasizes cormections between Sor Catalina and
other women, who figured as spiritual guides, mentees, and friends. At
the same time, the text reveals the culture of fear surrounding female
spirituality in seventeenth-century Spain, demonstrating the success of
the Inquisition in making women suspicious of each other. Bernique takes
care to distinguish his mother's spirituality—including the miracles she
performed and the visions she had—from the "insolent women who,
with diabolical astuteness, profaning the name of beata [. ..], wore the
Friendship in Seventeenth-Century Spain
435
habit of sanctity in order to hide their insolence [and] their vices."^"* The
trial of one such beata (lay religious woman) was used by Catalina's confessor as an occasion to punish his charge for her vanity: he ordered
Catalina to walk through the streets the day after the beata had been pimished publicly in the same area. Sor Catalina's piety prevented her from
hearing the insults hurled at her as she walked through the streets oblivious to anything but God's will. On other occasions, however, Sor Catalina
suffered great anxiety, much of which related to people's comments that
she should beware of the Inquisition. Eventually the Tribunal did call her
in to testify, but then released her without punishment.
Logically enough, the vita of Sor Catalina de Jesiis focuses on her exceptional spirituality and her accomplishments within the church. The
tensions between biography and autobiography, and between a mother's
rejection of family and her son's impulse to justify his mother's actions
add a fascinating dimension to the text. While the thread of women's interdependence runs throughout the narrative, the many references to
'•diabolical beatas" and to arguments between Sor Catalina and her aunt
suggest that women's relationships with each other were fraught with
difficulties. Sor Catalina's vita puts these tensions into relief, showing that
some of these difficulties stemmed from deep-rooted social pressures on
women (i.e., marriage and motherhood) and some of them were borne
out of the specific situation of a woman whose calling lay not with her
family but with the Catholic church.
Juan de Bernique's text details the toll taken by the daily physical and
spiritual work performed by nuns. Yet, as the plays of Sor Marcela de San
Felix (1605-1688) and other nuns confirm, religious women also found
time for recreation and humor.'^ Sor Marcela wrote several coloquios
espirituales (spiritual colloquies) that were performed by nuns, some of
whom had to dress as men to represent the male characters. Sor Marcela,
daughter of the famous playwright Lope de Vega, was no stranger to theater. Her plays combine a mastery of language with a sharp wit; the end
product is a corpus of allegories about the struggles of flesh and spirit.
Sor Marcela's brilliantly funny Coloquio espiritual de la muerte del
apetito (Spiritual Colloquy of ihe Death of Desire) details the fight of several
female characters against the evil, slothful Desire (Apetito). Three sisters—Mortification, Simplicity, Prayer—come together to support the
Soul in her battle against Desire. Tormented by her natural inclination
toward all of the different appetites (hunger, sexuality, gluttony) represented by the character Desire, the Soul relies on the female characters to
bolster her resolve to lead a spiritual life. The text begins with the banishment of Mortification from the Soul's life. But once the Soul calls her a
friend a "nasty, obstinate, and foolish woman" and sends her away, all of
the troubles start with the male character Desire.^*" The friendship
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Lisa Vollendorf
between the Soul and Mortification forms the backbone of the play, as
Mortification returns (with reinforcements) to protect the Soul from the
seductions of Desire. Jokes about the gluttony of friars and the stinginess
of nuns in charge of dispensing food are peppered throughout the play.
By the end of Death of Desire, the Soul has vanquished Desire with the
help of Mortification and her sisters. Desire initially refuses to die, but finally the women manage to hold him down and kill him. Portrayed as a
glutton and trickster ("burlador"). Desire represents the temptations of the
physical world. The nurturing, if not always easy, relationships among the
female characters form a soUd front against these temptations. The strong
pull of the male character Desire is counterbalanced and finally conquered
by the women's support network. The gender dynamics reflect those of cloistered life, in which nuns relied on confessors and priests for their spiritual
directives, but had to live with and depend on each other in their daily lives.
And, as Arenal and Schlau have noted about Sor Marcela's oeuvre.
Playful but pointed interchanges in the coloquios and loas regarding
the scarcity of food, the stinginess of those Sisters assigned to provide meals, the hypochondria of some nuns, the fierce temperaments
of a few and the strictness of others, show that daily existence in the
convent often bore little resemblance to the idealized portrayals created for consumption extramuros.^''
Sor Marcela adeptly combined humor, playfulness, and biting comments,
all of which add to the rich historical and literary value of her writing.
For all of its variability in genre, style, and purpose, literature produced in the convent emphasizes the importance of women's alliances
with each other. Women's networks emerge as one of the chief themes in
poetry, drama, and vitae. As Sor Violante's discussion of the value of
friendship suggests, convent life generated—indeed, required—strong
bonds among women. For scholars interested in women's history, the depictions of female friendship in convent writing are valuable precisely
because they cover the positive and negative aspects of the bonds that
women forged with each other.
III. Women's Self-Representation
Due to the demands and constraints placed on writers in different contexts, a wide range of texts needs to be examined if we are to come to a
more nuanced understanding of women's friendship in the early modem
period. Women's literature produced for public consumption in seventeenth-century Spain responded to literary traditions dominated by men.
Friendship in Seventeenth-Century Spain
437
Likewise, discussions of God the father and the father confessor occupy
center stage in much convent literature, and discussions of male-female
relations dominate much "secular" literature. But, as the texts of Carvajai,
Zayas, and Caro demonstrate, women inserted themselves into these traditions by shifting the focus to female characters and concems. The
differences between literature produced for the book market and that
produced in the convent relate to questions of genre, representation, and
audience. Plays and prose written for the public explore women's alliances and desires, and almost inevitably return to the marriage endings
common to most literature of the period. Even Zayas's surprising endorsement of same-sex desire has limits. Her tale "Mal presagio casar
lejos" ("Marriage Abroad: Portent of Doom") vilifies male homosexuality,
depicting a woman who "saw her husband and [his page] Arnesto engaged in such gross and abominable pleasures that it's obscene to think it,
let alone say it." The wife is so appalled by this "horrendous and dirty
spectacle" that she burns the bed.^^ Even the crossdressed man in "Love
for the Sake of Conquest" rejects and denigrates lesbian desire when he
asks: "Who's ever seen a woman fall in love with another woman?"''
Critics interested in the early modem period might benefit from thinking about this question in terms of access to women's self-representation.
Women's literature from the Spanish Golden Age allows us to "see" the
love that existed between female family members and friends. It allows
us to imagine, in the case of writers as daring as Zayas, the possibility of
female same-sex desire. It allows us to gain insight into the social networks that sustained women in their various roles as writers, mothers,
wives, nuns, and abbesses.
Until recently, we have not even had access to women's texts, so certainly we have not had the opportunity to reconstruct the contours of
women's lives. The literature produced for the book market tells us as much
about what was acceptable to the larger society as it does about the concems
of women in the period. Convent literatiire, on the other hand, provides a
more intimate glimpse into the daily lives of women who lived, prayed, and
worked together in the cloister. Other sources, such as letters and diaries,
remain to be tapped as well. Moreover, the Inquisition required that defendants tell their life stories, and these memoriales constitute a genre that has
yet to be studied in terms of self-representation. Even this brief, thematic
overview of women's writing from the period suggests that, if we read texts
produced in a range of contexts, we can reach a nuanced understanding of
the value of women's friendship in early modem Europe.
California State University
Long Beach, California
438
Lisa Vollendorf
NOTES
1. Books that attend to the question of honor during Spain's early modern period include: Marcelin Defourneaux, Daily Life in Spain in the Golden Age, trans.
Newton Branch (NY: Praeger, 1966); Edwin Honig, Calderon and the Seizures of
Honor (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1972); Matthew Stroud, Fatal Union: A Pluralistic Approach to the Wife-Murder Comedias (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1990).
As to men's representations of women in early modern literature. Sheila Fisher
and Janet Halley have stated, "for a male author to write women in these periods
was to refer not to women, but to men" (Introduction, The Lady Vanishes. The Problem of Women's Absence in Late Medieval and Renaissance Texts [Knoxville: U of
Tennessee P, 1989,1-17]: 4).
2. Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor, The Enchantments of Love, trans. H. Patsy Boyer
(Berkeley: U of California P, 1990): 175. For an analysis of Zayas in the context of
other "feminist" novella writers, see Josephine Donovan, "Women and the
Framed-Novelle: A Tradition of Their Own," Signs 22.4 (1997): 947-80. Throughout the article, I provide original Spanish quotations for texts that are not
available in modern editions. I have modernized spelling and punctuation from
original texts.
3. Susan Frye and Karen Robertson have noted that the increased numbers of
modern editions of women's writing "have only begun to alter our sense of the
lives of early modern women" and that such editions "have been crucial to our
examination of women's alliances because they offer more direct access to women's
self-representation" (Introduction, Maids and Mistresses, Cousins and Queens:
Women's Alliances in Early Modern England [NY and Oxford: Oxford UP, 1999, 317]: 7). The most accessible collection of early modern Spanish women's writing
appears on microfiche in Escritoras espafiolas, 1500-1900 (Microfiche catalogue.
Madrid: Chadwyck Healey Espafia, 1992-93). Many translations of women's texts
are available as well, including: Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz's La respuesta/The Answer, ed. Electa Arenal and trans. Amanda Powell (NY: Feminist Press, 1994);
Zayas's previously cited Enchantments of Love and The Disenchantments of Love,
trans. H. Patsy Boyer (Albany: State U of New York P, 1997); Zayas's play. La
traicidn en la amistad/Friendship Betrayed, ed. Valerie Hegstrom and trans. Catherine
Larson (Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell UP, 1999); Catalina de Erauso's Lieutenant Nun:
Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World, trans. Michele Stepto and Gabriel
Stepto (Boston: Beacon, 1996); and Viva al Siglo, Muerta al Mundo. Selected Works by
Maria de San Alberto, 1568-1640, ed., trans., and intro., Stacey Schlau (New
Orleans: UP of the South, 1998). Excellent critical studies on Spanish women include: Electa Arenal and Stacey Schlau, Untold Sisters: Hispanic Nuns in Their Own
Works (Albuquerque: U of New Mexico P, 1989); Mary Giles, ed. Women in the
Inquisition (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999); Barbara Mujica, Sophia's Daughters: Women Writers of Early Modern Spain (New Haven: Yale UP, 2004); Mary
Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton: Princeton
u p 1990); and Sherry Velasco, The Lieutenant Nun (Austin: U of Texas P, 2000).
4. For more on women's writing in Spain's long seventeenth century, see
Vollendorf, The Lives of Women: A New History of Inquisitional Spain (Nashville:
Vanderbilt UP 2005).
Friendship in Seventeenth-Century Spain
439
5. Julian Olivares calls the two women "intimate friends" and, based on comments by Caro and by fellow writer Castillo Solorzano, postulates that perhaps
the two women lived togetber wben Caro arrived in Madrid in 1637 (Olivares,
intro. and ed., Maria de Zayas y Sotomayor, Novelas amorosas y ejemplares
[Madrid: Catedra, 2000]: 9-147): 14).
6. For more on Caro's career, see Ruth Lundelius, "Ana Caro: Sparush Poet and
Dramatist," Women Writers ofthe Seventeenth Century, ed. Katharina M. Wilson and
Frank J. Wamke (Athens: U of Ceorgia P, 1989): 228-50; Amy Katz Kaminsky, "Ana
Caro Mallen de Soto," Spanish Women Writers: A Bio-Bibliographical Source Book, ed.
Linda Gould Levine, Ellen Engelson Marson, and Cloria Feiman Waldman (Westport,
CT: Greenwood Press, 1993), 86-97; and Lola Luna, "Ana Caro: ima escritora 'de
oficio' del Siglo de Oro," Bulletin of Hispanic Studies 72 (1995): 11-26. On Zayas and
Caro, see Elizabeth Ord6nez, "Woman and Her Text in the Works of Maria de Zayas
and Ana Caro," Revista de Estudios Hispdnicos 19 (1985): 3-15; and Teresa Soufas,
Dramas of Distinction (Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 1997). Book-length studies on
Zayas include: Marina S. Brownlee, The Cultural Labyrinth of Maria de Zayas (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 2000); Margaret R. Greer, Maria de Zayas Tells Tales of
Love and the Cruelty ofMen (University Park, PA: Penn State UP, 2000); and Vollendorf,
Reclaiming the Body: Maria de Zayas's Early Modern Feminism (Cbapel Hill: U of North
Carolina P, 2001).
7. Caro's poems, written for royal occasions and public festivities, are one exception to this focus.
8. Until recently, most critics disparaged Carvajal's literary abilities (see
Agustin de Ameztia, "Formacion y elementos de la novela cortesana," Opiisculos
hist6rico-literarios,Tomo I (Madrid: Real Academia Espafiola, 1951): 194-279; and
Manuel Serrano y Sanz, "Carvajal y Saavedra (Dofia Mariana de)," Apuntes para
una biblioteca de escritoras espanolas desde el ano 1401 al 1833, Tomo I (Madrid:
Sucesores de Rivadeneyra, 1903:236-44). Other critics bave praised what tbey see
as her realistic style (see Caroline Bourland, "Aspectos de la vida del bogar en el
siglo XVII segtin las novelas de Dofia Mariana de Carabajal y Saavedra,"
Homenaje ofrecido a Menendez Pidal, Tomo II [Madrid: Libreria y Casa Editorial
Hernando, 1925]: 331-68; Julio Jimenez, "Dofia Mariana de Carvajal y Saavedra,
Navidades de Madrid y noches entretenidas, en ocho novelas, Edicion critica y
anotada." Diss. Northwestern U, 1974; and Evangelina Rodriguez Cuadros,
"Introduccion," Novelas amorosas de diversos ingenios del siglo XVll (Madrid:
Castalia, 1987:9-69). See J. Jimenez (15-16), and Rodriguez Cuadros (39^0, n.76)
for discussions of previous criticism of Carvajal's work.
9. The translations appear in Noel M. Valis, "Mariana de Carvajal: The Spanish Storyteller," Women Writers ofthe Seventeenth Century, ed. Katharina M. Wilson
and Frank J. Warnke (Athens and London: U of Georgia P, 1989): 251-82.
10. Zayas, Disenhantments: 405.
11. Ibid., 224.
12. As in other countries, Spain's bistory of lesbianism is more veiled than tbat
of male homosexuality: the Inquisition prosecuted men, and only a few women,
for sodomy. Aside from this, research has discovered little on the written record
that would give more insight into contemporary attitudes toward same-sex relations between women in Spain. See Pedro Herrera Puga's dated but informative
440
Lisa Vollendorf
Sociedad y delincuenda en el siglo de oro (Madrid: Editorial Catolica, 1974), especially 246-69; Gregory S. Hutcheson and Josiah Blackmore's introduction to
Queer Iberia. Sexualities, Cultures, and Crossings from the Middle Ages to the Renaissance (Durham and London: Duke UP, 1999): 1-19; and Perry, "The 'Nefarious'
Sin in Early Modern Seville," Journal of Homosexuality 16.1-2 (1988): 67-90.
13. Zayas, Disenchantments: 217. The translation is modified slightly from Boyer's.
14. Bernadette Brooten's Love between Women: Early Christian Responses to Female Homoeroticism (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1996), refutes earlier scholarship
that suggested that female same-sex desire did not register as negative in Christian cultures. For studies on female same-sex desire in the early modern period,
see Mary Gossy, "Skirting the Question: Lesbians and Maria de Zayas," Hispanisms
and Homosexualities, ed. Sylvia MoUoy and Robert McKee Irwin (Durham: Duke
UP, 1998): 19-28; Valerie Traub, The Renaissance of Lesbianism in Early Modern England (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2002); and Velasco, "Early Modern Lesbianism
on Center Stage: Cubillo de Aragon's Anasco el de Talavera," Lesbianism and Homosexuality in Early Modem Spain, ed. Maria Jose Delgado and Alain Saint-Saens (New
Orleans: UP of the South, 1999): 306-21.
15. A translation of Caro's play appears in Amy Katz Kaminsky, Water Lilies/
Flores del agua. An Anthology of Spanish Women Writers from the Fifteenth through the
Nineteenth Century (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1996): 206-348.1 use my own
translations for quotations from the play and provide line numbers based on
Valor, agravio y mujer from Soufas, Women's Acts (206-348).
16.1 read the interaction between the crossdressed Leonor and Estela as homoerotic. However, Teresa Soufas has noted that the courtship scene can be read as a
female perspective on ideal heteroerotic courtship, a model of women's "mutual
recognition of what is truly appealing to them with regard to love and devotion"
(Soufas, Dramas, 120).
17. In the original, Estela says, "Leonardo, ^asi me engafiabas?" Leonor responds, "Fue fuerza, Estela" (Soufas, Women's Acts, 11. 2730-31).
18. "Quedemos / hermanas, Leonor hermosa" (ibid., 11. 2732-33).
19. For studies on the body and Christian religious experience, see Caroline
Walker Bynum, Fragmentation and Redemption: Essays on Gender and the Human
Body in Medieval Religion (NY: Zone, 1992) and Jesus as Mother. Studies in the Spirituality of the High Middle Ages (Berkeley: U of California P, 1982); Kathleen
Canning, "The Body as Method? Reflections on the Place of the Body in Gender
History," Gender and History 11.3 (November 1999): 499-513; Michel de Certeau,
The Mystic Fable. Volume I. The Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, trans. Michael
B. Smith (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1995); Elizabeth Alvilda Petroff, Body and Soul:
Essays on Medieval Women and Mysticism (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1994); and Ronald E.
Surtz, Writing Women in Late Medieval and Early Modern Spain. The Mothers of Saint
Teresa ofAvila (Philadelphia: U of Pennsylvania P, 1995).
20. While Sor Violante cannot be considered a Spanish author strictly speaking,
I include her here because she wrote both in Castilian and Portuguese and because she was born during the period of Spain's annexation of Portugal.
21. "Belisa, el amistad es un tesoro / tan digno de estimarse eternamente, / que
a su valor no es paga suficiente / de Arabia, y Potosi la plata y oro. / Es la amistad
Friendship in Seventeenth-Century Spain
441
un licito decoro / que se guarda en lo ausente y lo presente, / y con que de un
amigo el otro siente / la tristeza, el pesar, la risa, el Uoro. / No se llama amistad la
que es violenta, / sino la que es conforme simpatia, / de quien lealtad hasta la
muerte ostenta: / Esta la amistad es que hallar querria, / esta la que entre amigas
se sustenta, / y esta, Belisa, en fin, la amistad mia" (Tras el espejo la musa escribe:
lirica femenina de los Siglos de Oro, ed. Julian Olivares and Elizabeth Boyce
[Madrid: Siglo Veintiuno, 1993]: 271).
22. "Toda nuestra vida sobre la tierra es una guerra continua, la cual se
experimenta, no solo en la vida temporal, sino tambien, y atin con mas viveza en
la vida de perfeccion" (Angela Maria de la Concepcion, Riego espiritual para las
nuevas plantas [Madrid: Melchor Alvarez, 1691]: 6).
23. "Y combatientes en guerra tan continuada . . . son las Religiosas, que con
animo varonil se han alistado debajo de la bandera de su esposo" (ibid., 11).
24. "Carisimas mias, amadas, siervas del Sefior, rebafuto humilde de la Iglesia,
plantas nuevas de la Religion" (ibid., 10).
25. "Pero no nos desconsolemos, y aflijamos, avivese nuestra fe, esperanza, y
caridad en este Sefior" (ibid., 84).
26. Jessica Tvordi has cautioned against idealizing representations of women's
interaction and has urged critics to "desentimentalize female homoerotic alliances" ("Female Alliance and the Construction of Homoeroticism," in Frye and
Robertson, 114-30): 116.
27. "Todas las criaturas, hermanas, estan obHgadas a servir a Dios, y para esto no
les faltaran peleas y dificultades que veneer" (Angela Maria de la Concepcion, 21).
28. Like other vitae authored by male confessors, Catalina de Jesus's auto/
biography raises questions about authenticity and authorship. On these topics,
see Jodi Bilinkoff, Related Lives. Confessors and their Female Penitents, 1450-1750
(Ithaca: Cornell UP, 2005); and Marie-Florine Bruneau, Women Mystics Confront
the Modern World: Marie de I'Incarnation (1599-1672) and Madame Guyon (1648-
1717) (Albany: State U of New York P, 1997).
29. "Conjuraronse contra mi todas las criaturas, y todos los medios, que se pueden
pensar, para que esto se consiguiese. Entraba con tal disgusto en el matrimonio, y
con tanto aborrecimiento, que no puedo decir con verdad de a donde me venia
[...]" Quan de Bernique, Idea de perfeccion, y virtudes. Vida de laV.M.y sierva de Dios
Catalina de Jesus y San Francisco [Alcala: Francisco Garcia Fernandez, 1693], fol. 19).
30. Catalina is quoted as writing, "Besare la mano a mi tia todas las noches en
muestra de rendimiento" (ibid., fol. 73).
31. "Porque la casa en que vivia con su Tia era muy frequentada [sic\ de gente
de Universidad por causa de tener en ella el arte de la imprenta; y asi la primera
diligencia en que se empefio fue desocuparla de este ejercicio porque no podia ser
buena escuela de doncellas donde era tan frecuente y cuotidiano el concurso de la
gente" (ibid., fol. 273).
32. Bernique writes that his aunt yelled at his mother's suggestion of a girls'
school: "No tiene bastante de que cuidar con sus hijos, y no buscar los ajenos; no
basta que la haya yo criado, y gastado con ella lo que no tengo, sino que tambien
me quiera echar de mi casa, y Uenarmela de hijas de otras madres; quitarme lo
que me da de comer [...]" (ibid., fol. 273).
442
Lisa Vollendorf
33. The sickness was so revolting, according to Bernique, "que pudiera causar
asco al estomago mas fuerte, y menos melindroso. [...] Iba [Catalina] todas las
mafianas a la cama y con la lengua lamia y limpiaba toda la inmundicia" (ibid.,
fol. 226).
34. "Hubo en tiempos que mi V[enerable] M[adre] vivia, muchas insolentes
mujeres que con diabolica astucia, profanando el nombre de Beata y acogiendose
al sagrado de la virtud, se ajustaron el habito de santidad para paliar sus
insolencias, ocultar sus vicios [. . .]" (ibid., fol. 167).
35. Partial editions of the work of Sor Marcela and another nun, Sor Francisca
de Santa Teresa, appear in Teatro Breve de Mujeres (Siglos XVII-XX), ed. Fernando
Domenech Rico (Madrid: Asociacion de Directores de Escena de Espafia, 1996);
also see Marcela de San Felix, Obra completa: eoloquios espirituales, loas y otros
poemas, ed. Electa Arenal and Georgina Sabat-Rivers (Barcelona: PPU, 1988). A
translated, abridged version of "Death of Desire" appears in Arenal and Schlau,
250-68. For more on convent drama, see Arenal and Schlau; Elissa Weaver, "The
Convent Wall in Tuscan Convent Drama," The Crannied Wall: Women, Religion, and
the Arts in Early Modern Europe, ed. Craig A. Monson (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan
P, 1992): 73-86; and "Suor Maria Clemente Ruoti, Playwright and Academician,"
Creative Women in Medieval and Early Modern Italy, ed. E. Arm Mater and John
Coakley (Philadelphia: U of Permsylvania P, 1994): 281-96.
36. Soul says, "What a nasty woman! . . . How obstinate and foolish" (Arenal
and Schlau, 252).
37. Ibid., 243.
38. Zayas, Disenchantments: 265.
39. Ibid., 227.
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